


Watchtower

by mareza



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Memories, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, childhood friends squad does not deal well with anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 06:18:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20755727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareza/pseuds/mareza
Summary: When Sylvain is six and a half and climbs to the top of a tower with no one’s hand in his, he realizes that each and every one of the people he loves has been born as a gift to something else. Dimitri was born for Faerghus, and Felix was born for Dimitri. Glenn was born for the royal family, and Ingrid was born for Galatea and for Glenn. He realizes, too, that what they’re for decides their future. Dimitri will lead them into a better world. Felix will guide his path, and Glenn will protect his life, and Ingrid will bind her future to theirs.And Sylvain, who was born for the border, will stand in a watchtower. He will see the enemy before it comes, and he will keep Dimitri and Felix and Ingrid and Glenn safe.Dimitri reappears after five years. Sylvain knows it's his role to fix the mess they're in, but he doesn't know how.





	Watchtower

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for references to/depictions of canon-typical violence, general warfare, dehumanization, and child abuse. Also, Sylvain using sex in unhealthy ways, but with as much vagueness as I could get away with under the circumstances. Still, gave that an M for safety.

When Sylvain is six and a half, his father takes him to the easternmost watchtower in Gautier lands. The ride there is slow—Sylvain does not go on his own mount, a recently acquired pony that likes to nip his hair and that he mostly doesn’t fall off of, but sat before his father in the saddle, his father’s chest and arms around him a warm shield against the bitter cold.

At a half-mile still to go, they break through the line of ragged and hardy northern trees to see the watchtower in its full height, a line cutting straight into the sky. In the distance, Sylvain can see mountains, what must be the border with Sreng, but they are too far to look like anything but piles of dirt decorated with snow. When Sylvain looks back to his father, his father’s eyes are ahead on the red and black banners of House Gautier that hang from the tower’s walls.

They ride silently through the gates past soldiers who bow to them, archers up high and foot soldiers down low. At the stables, his father’s horse, always so strong and sturdy in his eyes, seems instead almost delicate against the hardier breed of winter war horse that there munches on piles of hay. His father dismounts and helps Sylvain down, then takes a moment to resettle Sylvain’s winter furs around him. When Sylvain looks up into his eyes, he is answered with a warmth that he rarely sees.

“What now, father?” Sylvain asks, his fingers drawn into his clothing for extra protection. He is learning to be rude already, but this seems serious, and Sylvain doesn’t want to make his father mad.

“Now, we go to the top.” 

Sylvain follows the direction of his gaze. From here at the bottom, the top is impossible for him to see.

His father isn’t cruel. Whenever Sylvain says he’s tired, they stop so he can catch his breath again. Whenever Sylvain says he’s thirsty, he offers him water. He keeps close to Sylvain’s side and never walks ahead. 

But he does not carry Sylvain, either. He does not pull him up when he stumbles, and none of the soldiers here stop to help him or offer support. Sylvain is a Gautier, and he bears a Crest. He must be strong on his own. All his father will do is show him the way.

It feels like it takes hours. When he complains, his father says it has only been one. But when he makes it to the highest level, his father dismisses the soldiers on watch there and takes the room for only themselves. He gives Sylvain another drink of water, then nods to the great open window that allows all of winter’s chill into their station. Sylvain knows by instinct that it is East. A Gautier always looks East. Sylvain walks closer, but turns to his father to shield himself from the full force of the Srengi winds.

“This is the place of a Margrave,” his father tells him. “We stand here as the first line of defense. When the enemy comes, we are first to raise the warning, and we are first to enter the fight. Soon, His Majesty will make his push into Sreng, and House Gautier will remain here to hold the border behind him.”

“Why are we staying here?” asks Sylvain, because he has seen his father with the fathers of his friends and knows that their Houses must always hold together. “Why don’t we march with the king?”

The Margrave shakes his head, and he taps the ledge as a command. And though the fall is long and the stone is slippery, Sylvain obeys his father’s orders and climbs up onto the ledge to look over the land that is theirs.

It is vast and beautiful, this world in front of him. It is snow-covered and broken only by bushes and weak trees. It makes Sylvain feel as if the whole world belongs to them, to watch over and to protect, and in his love for it he loses his breath.

“We are the Eastern border,” his father tells him, his eyes with Sylvain’s on the mountains ahead. “The king may dart past us to strike his enemies, or he may retreat behind us to safety. So too will Fraldarius, Galatea, and Charon, if they are called. House Gautier holds the border, and the border is where we stay.”

It's that moment. That moment is when the view changes in front of him in ways he can’t name. Something wells up from his stomach and into his throat, and for an awful instant, he feels certain he’s going to fall.

“Perhaps if your brother had our Crest, this could be a duty you shared, but…” The sigh is familiar. The sickness inside him gets worse. “There must always be a Gautier at the border, my son, one who can wield the Lance of Ruin against any threat. If Miklan can get his act together, he can be your spear outside our territory. But you must stay here and watch the border, so that no threat passes through us to the rest.”

Later, when Sylvain glances back into the heart of Faerghus to watch its snowy fields turn red, he will wish he had thought to ask his father what they should do when the enemy comes from inside.

The funniest thing about who Dimitri is now, Sylvain thinks, is that Felix has no idea how to handle being more right than he bargained for.

“Disgusting,” Felix mutters, throwing his spoon into his bowl. Sylvain knows he doesn’t mean the dinner, because Felix likes fish as much as he and Ingrid do, especially if it’s spicy. Dimitri is the only one who doesn’t care for it, and he'd always go along with it for their sakes. Sylvain has no idea what Dimitri is eating now.

“Felix…” Ingrid’s voice is quiet. Her fingers tap against the dining table, and she isn’t really digging into her food either, which is basically the biggest signal Sylvain has seen in his life that she’s upset.

“It’s _disgusting_,” Felix repeats, voice tight and hard, all his muscles a mirror to that audible tension. “It just stands there, day after day, talking to itself, growling at anything that gets near. We should put that thing out of its misery.”

“_Felix_.” Ingrid's voice shifts from weary to warning, and her tapping fingers have turned into a grip on the table. “_Don’t_ talk about him like that.”

“Why not?” Felix snaps back. “It’s not like he’s listening to me. It’s not like he _cares_. I could spit in his face and all he’d do is beg ghosts for forgiveness or demand Edelgard’s head.” 

“Don’t you _dare_. That’s our rightful king, Felix—” 

“That creature is king of nothing buts its own delusions, if that.” 

This is going to escalate if he lets it. Sylvain says, “Maybe we should get a hose and spray him down.”

Felix and Ingrid stop. They look at him like he’s an idiot. He shrugs at them and leans back—he’s not hungry either—so he can fold his arms behind his head.

“I mean, you guys smelled him. When’s the last time he took a shower, right?”

“Goddess, Sylvain,” Ingrid says, exasperation swiftly taking the dominant note in her voice. “Do you ever even think before you talk?”

Sylvain winks. “Only about how cute a girl is before I ask her out.” 

“You are the worst,” Ingrid tells him. He knows she doesn’t mean it. 

They lapse into silence a moment. Felix is still glaring at his dinner, but after a sigh, Ingrid takes a tentative prod at her food. “I just don’t know what to do about His Highness,” she says. “It’s like he’s not even the person we knew. I know that he was acting strange even when we saw him last, but now he’s just…” 

“He’s not Dimitri,” Felix says. It is not a hostile refusal, a shove away of what Ingrid is trying to say. It’s understanding the feeling she's trying to express.

But it’s wrong. It was Dimitri when they were children playing at being soldiers, just like it was Dimitri when they were preteens who fought with and teased each other. It was Dimitri whatever Felix saw in the Western Rebellion all those years ago, and it was Dimitri at the Academy, and it is Dimitri now, growling at them whenever they approach, speaking to the dead.

Maybe they don't understand because they're trying to leave behind parts of themselves from those days, too. Maybe they just don't know how to reconcile the different pieces. But Sylvain has watched them as they’ve grown into this. He knows.

“Look,” Sylvain says, because he has had a front row seat to this disaster his entire life and he’s really not feeling it tonight, “You two need to relax! So, okay, His Highness is a little bit crankier than usual—”

“He said he wanted to kill every single person in the Imperial army,” Ingrid corrects.

“—a little bit murdery-er than usual,” Sylvain amends. “Whatever. He probably hasn't really had human company since Fhirdiad, and we all know he never really recovered from Duscur anyway. But things are looking up! We’ve got the Professor back, and the Knights of Seiros are here. The Kingdom’s troops are going to get a morale boost once they realize the rightful king is still alive—”

“‘Alive,’” Felix scoffs. “That thing itself knows it’s a corpse.” 

Sylvain’s friends suck. 

“Fine. Once they realize that the rightful king still can throw a spear. My point is, we’ve been fighting for five years with less than we have now. I’m not saying that seeing His Highness like this doesn’t hurt. But he’s here now. We found him. That means we can help.”

“But how?” Ingrid asks, like she’s five again and expecting him to bestow upon them all the wisdom of his three extra years. “How can we help him? He won’t even talk to any of us.”

Felix has his arms folded. There’s a furrow in his brow that he probably thinks looks like anger, but Sylvain knows it isn't.

Sylvain doesn’t have an answer for them. He has seen the fractures in them all for years, but he hasn’t known what to do. What he knows, though, is that Felix doesn’t have the heart to play watchtower. That standing there and watching over Dimitri day after day is going to tear his heart to pieces. That Ingrid is no more suited to the strain of it, and besides, watching over them is Sylvain's job.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells them. “I’ll figure something out.”

Sylvain notices things. People don’t realize that about him, most of the time. They sigh when he doesn’t bring his homework or shows up late to training. They laugh when he lets a careless comment slip out of his mouth. They don’t notice that he is noticing them, and that’s how he prefers it. People let things slip more if they underestimate you. If they don’t know you’re watching, they don’t watch themselves.

Sylvain got good at noticing things in two ways. The first way Sylvain got good at it is this:

When Sylvain is four, the king gifts him his first toy sword. It’s more of an honor than Sylvain understands at the time, and he hears the adults make jokes about knighting ceremonies, but Sylvain does not really understand what a king is, except important, and he doesn’t really know what a knight is, except something he is going to want to be. But King Lambert has a kind smile, and Rodrigue ruffles his hair and slips him extra sweet buns off the table, and they both call him "the little Warden of the East” as he plays with Glenn, and he likes all of that better than being alone with Miklan.

Glenn tells him, “I’ll be the Shield, and you’ll be the Watch,” which Sylvain doesn’t get, but Glenn is good at explaining. Glenn tells him it’s Sylvain’s job to notice weird things, like enemy camps on the border or movement of strange men. Then Sylvain has to tell Glenn about it, and Glenn will go charging forward, and he’ll fight off the enemy while Sylvain makes sure no one comes up at them from behind.

“That sounds boring,” says Sylvain, who very much wants to use the sword the king gave to him. “I want to be the Shield too.”

Glenn frowns, and then, because Glenn is very fun to play with, he agrees that Sylvain can come fight with him too. “But,” Glenn says, “you still have to watch. We can’t know who to fight until you find the enemy.”

Sylvain takes this job very seriously. He camps out in a corner of the kitchens and takes note of where all the servers come and go, and he tells Glenn about an out-of-place sack of flour for them to defeat. He finds a post between some logs out in the courtyard and studies the king and the Duke and his father as they gather up a hunting party, then shows Glenn a rickety board in the stables that they can strike. By the end of the week, he and Glenn have run all across the Gautier home watching and shielding, finding enemy soldiers in every corner and annoying the servants with their battle cries.

It’s a good game. When Dimitri and Felix and Ingrid get older, Sylvain teaches it to them, too, but by then Sylvain and Glenn have training weapons instead of toys, and they have to remember to be gentle. Sylvain gives up charging forward with Glenn because Felix also wants to be a Shield, and Dimitri wants to fight beside him, and Ingrid refuses to get left behind, and that’s too many children to be attacking spare objects, especially with Dimitri’s sudden bursts of strength. 

One time, Dimitri makes a flour bag explode and then starts crying because he worries the adults will be angry with him. Then Felix starts crying because Dimitri is crying, and Ingrid refuses to cry but starts stomping around in distress, so Glenn and Sylvain have to stop the game to try to make them all calm down, holding their hands and promising them it will be fine. Rodrigue, who finds them, ends up laughing so hard he can't breathe when he sees that Dimitri's strength has turned them all into powdery ghosts. After that, they stop attacking anything messy, but someone still needs to find an enemy for them to fight, and none of them is better at it than Sylvain. 

They don’t stop playing until a couple years later. By then Glenn has started talking about getting squired, and the younger children all have their own training weapons, and they visit each other less and less. Even so, Sylvain never forgets the trick of it: stand somewhere just off of center, with your smile easy and your eyes open, and look for the thing that doesn’t want you to notice it’s there. Years later, it makes him very good and knowing exactly when to get himself between his classmates and an enemy attack.

This is the second way Sylvain becomes good at noticing things:

Miklan always gets a certain look in his eyes before he makes Sylvain hurt.

_things Sylvain notices:_

3\. They can all see what happens to Dimitri at Remire, but Sylvain is pretty sure no one else sees what happens to Felix. When Dimitri calls for blood, the others draw themselves in and try to push forward. Annete steps back in Mercedes’s space, while Mercedes takes her hand. Ingrid and Ashe try to put on the expressions of knights following their liege lord. Dedue watches Dimitri and stays near his side in the fight that follows, and he never flinches back from the spray of blood or viscera.

But Felix? Felix loses all the color in his face. His eyes widen; his breath quickens. His hands twitch by his sides. For one terrible moment Sylvain wonders if he’s going to faint, and then he wonders if Felix fainting might shake Dimitri out of the sickness gripping him, but Felix swallows back, and he draws his sword, and he asks the Professor to point him towards the enemy. By the time the Death Knight has retreated and Solon is gone and they’re picking through the village looking for survivors, Felix is spitting a warning about the boar showing his true nature and pushing away from them all, no hint of any weakness in his face. 

But Sylvain saw it. Sylvain doesn't forget.

_things Sylvain knows he’s missing: _

3\. There’s a rebellion in the west when Sylvain is eighteen, and the regent assigns Dimitri to go quell it, which is basically the shrewdest political move Sylvain has seen him pull in years. Sylvain never figures out before or after if Rodrigue is the one who sends Felix to fight there or if Felix demanded to join Dimitri in his maiden battle, but either way, Felix gets squired like Glenn had been years before and sent to the battlefield. In a few short weeks the rebellion is over and things are settled, and Felix and Dimitri have killed for the first time standing side by side, just like their dads always wanted them to.

Sylvain doesn’t go, of course. His father wants him close at hand. “When there is turmoil within a country,” his father reminds him, “enemies from without it prepare to strike.” But afterward, Sylvain gets the letter from Ingrid.

_There’s something wrong between His Highness and Felix. I don’t know what happened. Felix just keeps calling His Highness a beast. Will you try to talk to him?_

A few months later, Felix comes to visit with his father’s loan of a battalion of Fraldarius men. He doesn’t come to Sylvain crying like he used to. He doesn’t say that Dimitri hurt his feelings and made him feel sad, leaving Sylvain with the duty of wiping off his tears and telling him to go make up with his friend. He spends his time facing off against a training dummy, and Sylvain notices that he’s gotten a lot better at putting his sword through the heart.

Sylvain asks, “What happened?”

“There’s no point in discussing it,” Felix says. “He’s a beast. That’s all. I won’t fight with him again.”

Felix never elaborates. He sneers and spits whenever he speaks of Dimitri, refuses to be anywhere near him, leaves his own family’s territory whenever Dimitri comes to visit. He warns Sylvain and Ingrid over and over that Dimitri is not what he seems. But he never tells them what happened.

It’s almost funny, how obvious Felix is. Felix really just can’t seem to stop himself from playing Dimitri's Shield. It's just frustrating for Sylvain to try to help them when they won't tell him where to find the enemy.

Sylvain doesn’t figure out something to help Dimitri. 

Felix watches over Dimitri every day for the first month, lurking by a pillar and spitting vitriol like he can trick them into thinking he doesn’t care if he’s just mean enough about it. They fight off an Imperial attack, and Dimitri talks about using them until the flesh falls from their bones. Even years of Miklan doesn’t help Sylvain figure out if Dimitri means it or not. In the second month, Ingrid takes a post at the center of the cathedral, standing behind her king as stalwart and dutiful as a statue of a knight, and Sylvain stops by to make sure she feeds herself. Then Rodrigue shows up with soldiers, and when he gives Dimitri his father's weapon, Dimitri sounds more like who he used to be than Sylvain has witnessed in years.

Then it’s the third month. Sylvain stares through the cathedral doors, studying the sight ahead of him. Dimitri still in front of the rubble, with his cloak making him a blue mountain capped in snow and charcoal. Dimitri talking to people Sylvain knew ten years ago, then let go and left buried in the dirt. Dimitri alive, Dimitri with them again, Dimitri broken open and scraped empty and left to read futures in his own entrails.

Sylvain bumps into Gilbert as he leaves the cathedral. He gives him a quick grin before he makes his way out of the monastery and into the town, and while he’s there he decides that if he’s going to be stuck watching, he might as well get up to watching in the fun way. So he finds a pretty girl, one with straw hair and a loosely buttoned blouse, and then he finds two guys who look bored and hungry, and he makes an invitation that they accept for the same reasons anyone accepts anything from him. 

The sex is fine. It’s not mind-blowing, but it’s decent, and for most of it he’s thinking more about how much he hates Crests and his dead brother than he is about the state of things at the monastery, so he puts that down as an improvement. The room in the inn smells only a little like the village’s own special incense of rot and lingering smoke, delivered five years ago courtesy of the Empire and left to fester, and that's always a plus.

_This is what you wanted,_ he thinks to Miklan as he lets himself drown in hands and mouths and eyes, always eyes. _You pushed me down a well for this._ Every battle they have, he brings the Lance of Ruin with him, just in case they come across a Demonic Beast. He thinks of it here, of the way it wriggles and twitches, half-comical, half-obscene, every part an atrocity. He thinks, _I hate you_, and lets a mouth goes where it wants on him. He thinks, _I hated watching you_, and follows the guidance of a hand.

There’s a key part of watching that most people forget about. Your job is to notice what’s important and ignore everything that is not. So Sylvain has a keen memory for landscapes and troop movements and the warnings nature gives before the weather turns. He glances over battle maps and knows immediately where they need to place soldiers to keep the backlines safe. But to remember all that, you have to let other things slip from your thoughts: the blue of ice-covered snow in the early morning, a fluffed up wolf mother and her pack of months-old cubs, the song of the wind at great heights. Once, Sylvain pointed out to his father tundra flowers bursting through the snow, and his father said, _Look further_, until he saw a wisp of smoke barely visible against the grey mountain stone. That day they faced a bandit attack.

A hand grabs his cheek. Sylvain blinks, surprised, and thinks, _Huh. Blue eyes._ A voice he won’t remember asks if he’s still alright and brushes something wet from his cheek, and Sylvain remembers to forget what he’s looking at. Sharp teeth draw him back into his pleasure, and an upturned nose traces a path down his chest.

News of the coup in Fhirdiad comes to Gautier twice over, once in a letter and once by mouth.

The first, an official missive from the capital, is handed to Margrave Gautier by a rider in royal blue, a sword at his side and a seal on his chest. Sylvain’s father takes the letter and reads it over, and as he reads Sylvain watches his expression transform from a frown to anger that he hasn’t seen since the day Miklan got himself disowned.

Neatly, carefully, the Margrave folds the letter in his hands. He looks up. He studies the rider’s face. “You’re from Cornelia directly,” his father asks with no trace of masking levity.

“That’s correct,” the rider answers.

“And you bore witness?”

“No, my lord. It was conducted privately.”

“But you can confirm it,” his father insists. “You confirm the letter’s contents.”

“Yes, my lord,” says the rider. “The execution was held three days ago. Prince Dimitri is dead.”

Sylvain knows that his father says something else after. Later, he remembers the sounds of those words as noises sinking into his ear. But he doesn’t know what those words are, only that they happened, and he was there to hear them.

Sylvain thinks, distant from his thoughts, _We were looking in the wrong direction._

Sylvain thinks, calm with panic, _I need to get to Felix and Ingrid._

He doesn’t, of course. His father doesn’t want him leaving when there is so much chaos. So he goes out into town and comes back the next morning sick with a headache, and halfway through morning training he vomits all across the frozen stone floor.

When the second message comes, it’s only three days later, coming from the same direction as the first. This rider looks exhausted, his horse desperate for water, but he tells them, “A verbal message from Duke Fraldarius, my lord,” and will do nothing before his mission is complete.

Margrave Gautier invites the messenger into his study and nods Sylvain permission to come with him. He shuts the door behind them, then turns to Rodrigue’s man.

“Duke Fraldarius sends his greetings to Margrave Gautier and wishes him the Goddess’s blessings in this time of ill fortune,” begins the messenger, and some part of Sylvain thinks it’s hysterical that Rodrigue is starting insurrection with a formal address. “He sends this message to inform you that he has been to the capital and not been given leave to see the body of our prince and rightful heir. He sees deceit in the works of Cornelia and has news of Imperial soldiers marching eastward to Fhirdiad, unhindered by the western lords. 

“He reminds you now the oath you took in service to the Blaiddyd line and of the bonds of friendship you have shared with him these many years fighting against Faerghus's foes. In the name of the late king His Majesty King Lambert Egitte Blaiddyd and the Crown Prince and rightful heir Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Duke Fraldarius enjoins you to stand with him in his mission to recover our missing prince and fight the Empire’s tyranny over our land.”

There are a lot of things Sylvain could say about his father but never does. That he raises his children to serve a purpose instead of to live a life. That if there is no purpose to a child, they become invisible to him. That his father himself had been raised the same way and he is just passing his own father’s teachings on, the way Miklan once passed on what their father taught to him, the way Sylvain is probably doomed to pass on these lessons to his own heirs.

But Sylvain would never call Margrave Gautier a disloyal man.

“Send word to the Duke that I do not forget my oaths or the love between us,” his father says. “Gautier will answer Fraldarius’s call.”

For the first time in Sylvain’s life, his father turns his eyes away from the East. He doesn’t ask if Sylvain agrees, but he doesn’t have to.

Sylvain had been looking in the wrong direction when the enemy came. This time, he will be watching the right way.

“We need to talk, Sylvain,” says Mercedes, like the punishment of the Goddess made manifest through a gentle word. “We’re worried about you.”

“What?” Sylvain laughs. “Worried about me? Come off it, guys. What do you have to worry about?” 

There’s three of them under the gazebo: Mercedes taking the vanguard like a born cavalrywoman and Ashe and Annette flanking her, with Annette chewing her lip so much the skin is starting to flake and Ashe’s nose scrunched up in a way that makes his freckles all the more obvious. They’re sweet, those three. Sweet and dangerous: the Blue Lions’ own little trio of ranged terrors. Back in the Academy days, they’d group up behind Dedue, letting him draw in enemies and then wiping them out with bright smiles. Dedue never complained about having to leave Dimitri’s side despite his self-proclaimed mission in life; he seemed to like acting as shield for all of them. Sylvain had never dared crack a joke about Dedue stealing the Fraldarius job description for fear of making the tension between Dedue and Felix worse.

The battle formations have switched up these days. Annette’s comfort with using their tank for cover has vanished now that it’s Gilbert raising his shield on the front lines, and Mercedes doesn't seem to much appreciate being near the father who left Annette behind. Ashe has full mounted range and can strike at a terrifying distance, meaning he no longer has to rely on their front lines to keep him out of danger, and most of the time he retreats before anyone gets a chance to get close.

Sylvain thinks sometimes that Dedue would have had to ask for a horse himself, if he were still around. It’s all that Sylvain, Ingrid, and Felix can do to thin enemy numbers every time Dimitri throws himself directly into the densest part of the battlefield. Mercedes rarely has the opportunity to attack when she’s forced to constantly restore their depleting health.

“We… we noticed that you’re not doing great,” Ashe tries. He looks at Mercedes for help, and she smiles gently at him before turning her eyes back on Sylvain.

“You’ve been out a lot lately, Sylvain.”

Sylvain laughs at that. “Hey, come on, I get enough of this from Ingrid.” He likes to remember the one positive of Dimitri completely vanishing into his suffering: one less person to lecture him about his bad habits. This triplet replacement for his lost prince is not appealing to him. “It’s war, guys. What’s the point in surviving if we don’t have a little fun?” His eyes rake over the set, trying to pick out the weakest to attack and grinning when he finds Ashe's frown. “Maybe you should give it a try yourself.”

Ashe flusters immediately, but there’s no blush, which means Sylvain didn’t hit as hard as he wanted to. And Mercedes intervenes with the same steady refusal of Sylvain’s bullshit that made him pick Ashe over her in the first place. She says, “Do you really believe that we care about you so little we’d let that distract us, Sylvain?” 

Ugh. _Ugh._ This is why he’s been avoiding her. “I’m _fine_,” he says, groaning for dramatic effect. “It’s not like anyone gets hurt. I show up for war councils, take dinner with everyone—hell, I even go to tea with the Professor. There’s nothing wrong here.”

Annette folds her arms. “That isn’t the point, Sylvain. And I know you know that, because you always know, and you just pretend you don’t! You just… you always refuse to do anything about it even though you know!” 

Ashe moves in to support Annette’s uneven attack. “We can tell you aren’t happy. It’s pretty obvious, really.” (Hurtful. Sylvain is confident that it isn’t obvious at all.) “And you’re getting more reckless in battle. You’ve always been eager to take a hit for any of us, and I know that’s because you want to protect people, but this isn’t normal, Sylvain. This is getting dangerous.”

“You can’t keep hiding your problems from all of us by running off into town,” Annette tells him.

When Sylvain laughs, the notes aren’t quite right even in his own ears. It's irritating. _Do better, Sylvain. This is what you’re good at._ “I’m not hiding anything, guys. I’m just making sure I enjoy myself between arrows to the knee.”

Ashe winces as if they’re _his_ arrows. Annette’s nervous fidgeting has evolved into her tugging on her own fingers. She says, “But… you’re not enjoying yourself? I’ve seen you coming back from town, Sylvain. You look… bad.”

The trailing off is a weak point, so Sylvain goes for it. “Maybe that’s just because you haven’t come with me in town.” He grins wide, drops his voice down to flirtatious, and forces her to make eye contact. “You’re welcome to join me, little Annie. Group activities are more fun with a friend.”

Like Ashe’s, Annette’s retreat is more wounded than flustered. He can see frustration in her, the same kind that Gilbert always seems to cause, as she says, “Stop being a jerk! We’re trying to _help_!”

“I don’t need your help,” Sylvain says for what feels like the hundredth time this month. “I’m fine. Trust me.”

“We do trust you, Sylvain,” says Mercedes. “We trust you to always try to look out for us. But we worry that we can’t trust you with yourself.”

“Trust me with myself, huh?” Sylvain’s voice is tight in a way he doesn’t like but he keeps going, even as he hears it turn into more of a tourniquet with every word. “Well maybe you’re trying to help the wrong person. What about if you stopped wasting time on me and started trying to help His Highness instead?”

“That isn’t fair—” Ashe starts, but Sylvain is very good at talking over people, and he’s feeling a really strong urge to use that now.

“Oh, wait, you can’t. None of us can. You just stand there, and watch, and let it happen, and do _nothing_, because you know there isn’t a damn thing you can do. What’s that he always says when you drop a heal on him, Mercedes? ‘Wasted effort’?” 

Annette tries, “Sylvain—” 

“Yeah,” Sylvain continues over her. “_Wasted effort_. That’s what all of this is. Maybe if you spent half as much time trying to reach out to him instead of scolding me for making the most of this mess, we’d get somewhere, but it’s cool. I feel you. It’s easier to go for me, so who cares about Dimitri? It’s not like _he’ll_ notice you abandoning him to the ghosts in his head.”

“Sylvain, stop it,” Annette says. “_Yes_, Dimitri's situation is awful, and I hate that I don't know how to help him. But you matter to us too.”

_No_, Sylvain decides. This isn't going to be about him. His smile stretches wide across his lips, and when Annette meets his eyes, she freezes like a deer before a hunter. _Good_. “Haha, no, I get it now. My bad. It's not His Highness you're distracting yourself from here, is it? This is about you getting shoved away by someone else. He's a little old for the comparison, sure, but the knight thing, and the hair color? Yeah, I see where you're coming from.”

Ashe warns, “_Sylvain!_” but Sylvain doesn't listen.

“Kinda weird, but hey, it's not the first time I've been a substitute for someone's old man,” Sylvain continues, leaning towards Annette, knowing exactly where she likes to keep her boundaries and taking himself past that edge. With a wink, Sylvain brushes his thumb over her shocked-open lips. “It stings always being left out in the cold, huh, Annie? It's alright. Now that I know what this is about, I'm all in. Give me the night, and I'll make sure you'll forget all about still being invisible to your dear old dad.”

Mercedes slaps him.

Sylvain thinks, distantly, that a healer should not be allowed to hit harder than a pegasus knight. 

“Sylvain,” she says, and her voice is no less quiet or soft than usual, which Sylvain hates more than anything else in this conversation. “That’s enough.”

Sylvain looks them all over. Annette looks like she wants to cry, which Sylvain knows means she’s furious at him. Ashe’s jaw is closed tight, and Sylvain is sure his voice will tremble if he talks. Mercedes just looks disappointed.

“Yeah,” Sylvain says. “You know what? This is the worst foursome I’ve done all month. Sorry, but I’m out.”

They don’t follow him. In town, he finds a girl with green eyes and a guy with hands so strong they could break his wrists, and then he invites a third with a bitter scowl to join them in their fun. When he shows up to war council the next day, Ashe won’t look at him, and Annette spends the whole meeting glaring at her papers, but Mercedes watches him from start to finish, steady and certain. Sylvain wonders if this is what it will feel like when he dies and stands before the Goddess for judgement.

Dimitri doesn’t come to the meeting, as usual. So maybe Sylvain will get lucky and find out the answer soon enough.

Sylvain does actually figure out what Felix means by calling Dimitri a boar. He just never tells him about it.

After Dimtiri comes out alive from his first battle, the crown gains a Blaiddyd it can throw into conflict, but Fraldarius can no longer send out its young shield to fight at his side. Charon has sons and daughters, but it’s been a little more hesitant to loan them to the crown since it implicated one in treason, and Galatea’s precarious future is too narrowly balanced on its daughter. There’s Dedue, of course, but no one counts him, which leaves House Gautier with the offer to serve at the prince’s side. Sylvain’s father accepts.

Dimitri at war, Sylvain quickly learns, is Dimitri outside of war but worse. The stiff smiles and awkward laughter that crystalized after the tragedy become more obviously strained, and the impassable distance left from all those deaths turns thicker than the mountain range between Faerghus and Sreng. On the battlefield itself, he’s clear-headed and confident, barking commands and killing enemies without flinching but still pausing a moment to mourn the loss of life. He's the perfect Faerghan prince. It’s only before and after that he’s a problem.

But then:

It’s late at night. The enemy has mages. Fire spreads through the camp and screams rise up all around then. Sylvain is a son of winter and the heat eats away at him, but he takes up his lance and throws himself into battle, and nothing seems any worse than any other fight until he finds Dimitri in the flames. 

A beast, Felix said. A wild boar. Sylvain sees Dimitri laughing, and he thinks, _Wrong again,_ because boars don’t grin like that, boars don’t wear a look of triumph when they tear off heads. Sylvain realizes that Felix must be afraid that Dimitri likes it. That he saw that terrible grin and feared that the kind-hearted boy they all loved is gone.

But Sylvain is an expert in fake smiles, so he knows what he’s looking at. And he knows that for as right as Felix is to be terrified, he is terrified in the wrong way.

“Tear them apart!” Dimitri screams as Sylvain chokes on smoke and iron. He knows fake smiles better than anyone. He knows that the things inside them only grow more ravenous with time. This one is eating Dimitri up, and if no one stops it, he will have nothing left in him but his pain and his rage.

But Sylvain never talks about it. He can't bear telling Felix or Ingrid. He can't bear the thought of having no answers when they look to him to make it stop.

_things Sylvain notices:_

2\. The walls between the dorm rooms of Garreg Mach are thick, but they are not thick enough. For one year, Sylvain lives at the end of a hallway where he has to pass by Ingrid, Dimitri, and Felix to do anything. Worse yet, sharing a wall with Dimitri means that even getting a girl past them would guarantee being overheard and receiving a lecture over it the next day.

Felix hates it, too, of course. Not the part where Sylvain’s night life is ruined—he definitely approves of that—but the part where he has to sleep next to his childhood friend. 

“It’s not like we’re kids anymore,” Felix says. “There’s no reason for me to sleep beside him.”

“I forgot you used to do that!” says Sylvain, who definitely has not forgotten. “Man, I remember one time when there was a thunderstorm out, and you were both so scared that you started crying for each other, and you refused to go to bed until your dad let you go to Dimitri’s room and—” 

“Shut up,” Felix says. He huffs out another noise of displeasure, a sneer finding its way onto his somehow still babyish face. “Ugh. If my old man hears about it, he’ll go on about the boar’s safety. About being there between him and anything that would want to strike.”

“Well, yeah,” Sylvain agrees. “But he’s the Shield. That’s kind of what he’s about.” 

Sylvain’s father, he thinks, would want him to switch places with Ingrid—to be the first line of defense when the enemy comes. To die shouting back to Ingrid and Dimitri and Felix that they need to escape.

But he can’t switch rooms with Ingrid. And soon enough, Sylvain realizes that the thinness of the walls goes both ways.

Dimitri never brings up his nightmares. He can tell from the bags under Felix’s eyes and the tension in his shoulders on mornings after particularly bad bouts that Felix hears them too, but neither of them say anything to each other. For all that they have strayed from their set courses in certain ways, they are both of them their fathers’ sons, trained for as long as they can remember to serve king and country. It's just that their fathers never taught them how to protect someone from this.

They don't tell Ingrid what’s happening. But sometimes after one of Dimitri's bad nights, when he catches a quiet frown in her expression, or when she lays off a moment from lecturing him about not training hard enough, Sylvain thinks she must suspect.

_things Sylvain knows he’s missing:_

2\. The thickness of the walls lets him hear just enough to know Dimitri is crying out and not enough to know what he says. Years later, he thinks back on this and wonders: if the walls had been thinner, would he have learned enough to change what was to come? 

Two weeks after Felix’s father dies, the Professor invites Sylvain to tea.

The Professor has had a mania for tea ever since their return, so Sylvain doesn’t think too much of it, and he’ll always grab a chance for some free bergamot. It’s only when the conversation turns to reliable allies and the Professor says, “It’s nice to be able to use my chamomile again,” that Sylvain realizes a trap has been sprung.

“Haha, yeah.” Sylvain leans back in his seat, throwing his hands behind his head. He’s suddenly really not feeling his drink. “So His Highness is accepting your tea time invitations, huh? Nice to have him back.”

“It is,” the Professor agrees. They turn their cup in their hands, like they want to stir up the sugar on a mild centrifugal force. “Felix has been, too.”

Sylvain’s fingers twitch in his hair. He keeps his grin in place. “Good for him. Then again, how could anyone turn down tea with you?”

The Professor sips their tea gently, leaving Sylvain with the thought that he should have taken a leaf out of Dimitri’s recently abandoned playbook and done exactly that. The Professor keeps watching him, and Sylvain feels his jaw get tight.

_Back off,_ he wants to say. _Looking after people is my job. Don't try it on me._

But he can’t, can he? The Professor is the one who has gone to Dimitri and Felix, not him. Dedue is the one who helped Dimitri take that first step back, Rodrigue is the one who pushed him forward, and the Professor is the one who walked him home. He's sure that the Professor even took the moment to reach out to Ingrid and talk her through her grief.

Some Margrave he is. Some friend.

“Did you know Rodrigue well?” the Professor asks, which isn’t subtle even a little, and only their lack of affect makes it work.

“Well, yeah, sure,” Sylvain says, shrugging. “The four of us—” (five, but Sylvain has kept Glenn out of the count for years) “—visited each other pretty often growing up. We all ended up pretty familiar with each other’s parents, for better or worse.” 

“Have you mourned him?”

Nice try. Sylvain flashes a grin. “I’m good, Professor, thanks. He was Felix’s dad, not mine.”

“Dimitri and Ingrid are mourning him,” they point out, with their usual placid stubbornness.

“I mean…” Sylvain draws his hands back from behind his head and gives a shrug. “In some ways, he was kind of His Highness’s dad more than he was Felix’s at this point, wasn’t he. And I don't think he ever stopped thinking about Ingrid as his future daughter-in-law, you know?” 

The Professor hums quietly, which Sylvain takes as agreement. Ingrid has told Sylvain about Rodrigue’s final words. Felix hasn’t said anything to him, and Sylvain hasn’t asked.

The Professor lets the silence sit for a while, which is unusual for their tea times. They sip their tea, and Sylvain tries not to think too hard about anything while he doesn’t touch the food on his plate.

At last, the Professor says, “It isn’t a far walk from outside the knight’s hall to within it.”

“Who would have thought,” Sylvain answers, like he doesn’t know where this is going.

“You haven’t spoken to Dimitri yet.”

He tries not to sound bitter when he asks, “He tell you that?”

The Professor shakes their head. “He doesn’t talk to me about you that way.” They tap the edge of their cup. “The first thing he ever told me about you was that you were a capable person who highly valued his friends.”

“That’s super sweet of him,” Sylvain replies, the bergamot gone sour in his mouth, “but if you're gonna claim he didn't mention the skirt-chasing, I'm not gonna buy it.”

“He did mention that, too,” the Professor agrees. “But he mentioned your worthiness as a friend first.”

They study him a moment. Sylvain hates it. They always disagree when Sylvain says he feels they can see right through him, but he knows they’re lying, every time. 

“Sylvain,” the Professor says. “You said you couldn’t forget what he did, but you wanted to stand beside him.”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging, and if his shoulders draw in a little with the movement, so what? “That’s what I’m doing. Sticking it out with him.”

The Professor doesn’t answer. They both know that standing watch outside a building is not the same as standing beside a friend. Sylvain is pretty sure they both know why Sylvain can't make himself take those steps.

Tea finished, the Professor gets to their feet. They walk over to Sylvain’s side of the table. Gently, carefully, they set a hand on top of his head and let it stay there.

It reminds Sylvain of a parent, or an older sibling. Of what Miklan should have been to him all those years ago. Of what Sylvain should be to his friends right now.

“You aren't to blame for not saving them,” the Professor tells him. “You have to forgive yourself, too.”

Sylvain stands. “Thanks for the treat, Professor. I’d like to do this again some time.”

His smile is a good one, if he says so himself. It stays there easy and familiar as the Professor nods. It doesn’t falter once on the way back to his room. It even stays with him when he shuts the door, closes the shutters, and lays down on the bed to wait for this sickness to leave his throat.

When Sylvain is six and a half and climbs to the top of a tower with no one’s hand in his, it's not just his own purpose he realizes. Thinking it over on the long ride home, Sylvain realizes that everyone he loves was born as a gift. Dimitri was born for Faerghus, and Felix was born for Dimitri. Glenn was born for the royal family, and Ingrid was born for Galatea and for Glenn. He realizes, too, that what they’re for decides their future. Dimitri will lead them into a better world. Felix will guide his path, and Glenn will protect his life, and Ingrid will bind her future to theirs. 

And Sylvain, who was born as a gift for the border, will stand in a watchtower. He will see the enemy before it comes, and he will keep Dimitri and Felix and Ingrid and Glenn safe from everything outside. 

It’s a shame, he thinks when he is much older. It’s a shame he took so long to learn the lesson Miklan tried to beat into him inside their own house.

It never gets cold enough at the monastery.

To be fair, it’s not exactly winter anymore. Sylvain was already hot in his armor before Edelgard decided to set Grondor Field on fire, and it hasn’t gotten better in the aftermath, not with spring making its smooth slide towards summer’s start. Out here on the turrets, overlooking the whole of the monastery, he leans into the coldest winds they have around.

“Sylvain,” Dimitri says from behind him. His voice is the same but different, now—higher than it was for those terrible months, but still scraped out and ragged, like he has had to drag it out of the depths of his chest by hand. “I would speak with you, if you would permit it.”

Sylvain laughs, but he doesn't turn around. “'Permit it'? Your Highness, how could I ever say no to you?”

A moment of quiet. Dimitri steps forward beside him, and Sylvain catches him in the corner of his vision. Dimitri, always too soft for his own good, doesn’t make him meet his eye. “I wanted to… apologize,” Dimitri starts. “For not reaching out to you earlier. I… There has been a great deal to do. Yet I cannot forgive myself for neglecting one of my dearest friends.”

The vertigo wells up in him again and he laughs it back, drawing away from the balcony. “Hey, hey, relax there. I’m doing just fine. It’s me we’re talking about, remember? I take care of myself.”

“Even so,” Dimitri says. He steps back from the balcony with Sylvain, and now there is no avoiding the sharpness of his eye. “You all attempted to reach your hands out to me, and each time I turned those kind gestures away. It is my turn, now, to reach for you.”

Sylvain wishes he would look away. He wishes he were anywhere else. “I know you weren’t exactly at your most observant, Your Highness, but I didn’t reach out to you there.” He puts on a grin, wide and lecherous and perfectly crafted to make an easily flustered prince turn away. “No offence, but you were a lot less interesting company than the girls in town.” 

Dimitri cants his head in that earnest, open way of his. Even with so much bulk, the mess of his hair, the cut of his eyepatch and the frame of his cloak, he still reminds Sylvain of the kid he was—quick to cry, shy to laugh, snotty-nosed and eager but still the one that had to be convinced the most before he would join their games. Always too serious.

Dimitri says, “But you did reach out, Sylvain. All our lives, have you not watched over us as we found our way?”

There’s something in Sylvain’s chest, something he can name but doesn’t want to. He forces it down with a laugh and answers, “Margrave’s job, Your Highness. I know it’s my duty to watch the border for you.”

“No,” Dimitri says, and when Dimitri pulls off his gloves and then takes Sylvain's hands in his, Sylvain can't quite believe that it's Dimitri's bare fingers on him after all these years. The warmth of them is burning. “You diminish yourself. It was you who picked us up when we bruised ourselves, who guided us through our foolish fights. You protected us from the truth of Miklan’s actions, fearing to destroy our innocence. After Duscur, it was you who brought Ingrid out of her shell, who comforted Felix as I was unable to, who offered me levity that no others could.”

The wind is making Sylvain's eyes burn, and he wants to pull away but Dimitri has always been insanely strong, turning them all into ghosts with his smashed-open flour sacks, so he can’t. He can’t. He’s stuck here listening to this, drowning in the words that Dimitri is determined to give no matter what Sylvain says.

“Sylvain, I do not blame you for not drawing me out of a prison of my own making. That you would even wish to is beyond what I deserve. That you are still _here_, after everything—” 

“Of course I’m here, Dimitri.” Even now, even tasting broken glass in his mouth, he has to make sure Dimitri understands that. When the Goddess calls him to account, Sylvain will bring this up as one duty he didn’t neglect. “You’ve been my friend since we were kids. I’m not going to abandon you.”

The glass grinds into bitter powder when he speaks. 

Dimitri watches him with his one remaining eye (_Where was I when that happened? Why didn’t I protect you from it?_) and speaks so softly that the raggedness of his voice is almost inaudible. “You offer me so much compassion. Why, then, do you not offer that same compassion to yourself?” 

In Gautier, there is a view as vast as it is barren, stretching from a watchtower to the edge of the land that Dimitri’s ancestors gave to Sylvain’s. There’s a wind so cold and quick that every touch is a slap, that soldiers have to be wary of the water freezing in their mouths. There is a reminder: watch the tree line, the mountains, the tundra, but not for their beauty. Study them for movement. Find the enemy and keep it at bay.

“You’re going to make me blush,” Sylvain says. He keeps is voice steady. He’s proud of that. “With moves like that, no wonder all the ladies go for you.” 

“Ever the flirt,” Dimitri answers. He is smiling the way he used to smile when he was six and Sylvain could tickle him out of a bad mood. “Still, I ask you to spare the women of Garreg Mach your presence for one evening, if you will allow my imposition. Ingrid and Felix have agreed to dine with me, and we should like that you join us as well.”

“Hang on. You got _Felix_ to agree to eat with you? Without the Professor’s interference?”

The corners of Dimitri’s mouth twitch. “We are grown enough now to patch up our own fights, at least on occasion. But I think all three of us would be grateful if we had the, ah, charmer of our group to see that the meal runs smoothly despite ourselves.”

Sylvain knows the stars well, trained on them as maps for lost hunters, guides for soldiers on the march. Sylvain looks up, following a line of three bright points northward, and then calculates the distance to the east. He looks ahead in the direction of the border he was born for. A world of stone and wood is in his way.

“I think I could disappoint the ladies for one night,” Sylvain says, bringing himself back. When he squeezes Dimitri’s hands, Dimitri probably bruises his fingers squeezing back. “Although maybe spare them from getting the wrong idea about all this hand-holding you've got going on?” 

Dimitri laughs. It doesn’t sound stilted.

_things Sylvain notices:_

1\. In this light, Dimitri's eye is the unbroken blue of the snow-covered tundra before daybreak. Ingrid's voice rings smooth and strong as winter winds through a tower, and Felix's smile breaks to the surface like a tree fighting its way free of deep snow.

**Author's Note:**

> (asoiaf voice) There must always be a Gautier in Winterfell. 
> 
> i have a fe3h twitter now @[marezafic](https://twitter.com/marezafic)!
> 
> [GORGEOUS ART OF SYLVAIN BY THE WATCHTOWER](https://twitter.com/feastevil/status/1178330005295767553) by [feastevil](https://twitter.com/feastevil)!!!!! please look at it, it does so much to capture the mood of the fic!! the tower! the mountains! the fields!! sylvain looking outward!


End file.
